The situation is awful - and getting worse

I just updated my spreadsheet for the first time in four days. I was absolutely astounded at how much worse the numbers were:

1.      My projection for Covid deaths in December jumped from 58,000 to 79,000.

2.      This entailed an increase in the average daily number of deaths from 1,901 to 2,577, which is two deaths every minute.

3.      The 7-day growth rate in deaths jumped from 4.3% to 5.8%.

4.      The 7-day growth rate in cases went from 8.9% to 10.2%.

5.      Here’s the most frightening change of all: The test positivity rate jumped from 10.2% to 28.5%.

I read this morning that the US is likely to have 540,000 deaths by April. However, I think that’s wildly optimistic. If we just keep adding 80,000 deaths per month, as we will likely do in December, we’ll have 320,000 more deaths in January through April. This means we’ll have 670,000 total pandemic deaths by the end of April. And that would imply a drop in the growth rate, since if deaths continue to grow at 6% a week (i.e. more than 24% a month) as they are now, we’ll have about 840,000 deaths by the end of April.

Plus, there’s no reason why the 7-day rate of growth will stay at 6%. Absent any significant additional mitigation measures, it will continue to increase. I talked a lot about exponential growth back in March and April. If left to its will (which is more or less what’s happening in large parts of the country now), this virus grows exponentially. So the 7-day rate of increase itself will likely continue to grow, just as it’s jumped 1.3% in just the last four days. This means there’s a very real chance we’ll be over a million deaths before the summer, which is the earliest that herd immunity might come about due to vaccinations.

It’s becoming almost inevitable that we’ll need to implement a nationwide lockdown, unless more strict measures (like closing bars and restricting restaurants to takeout, as well as universal mask wearing. Oh…also a ban on interstate travel) are taken. We’ve been dilly-dallying for far too long.

Of course, Trump is doing nothing about this, and is in fact doing his best to encourage the spread, like his 25 White House Christmas parties (which aren’t going to happen, at least not on the scale he’s thinking, and not without masks). The terrible cost of his inaction will be clearly visible by the late spring.

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). The projections are based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 5.8%.

Month

Deaths reported during month

Avg. deaths per day during month

Deaths as percentage of previous month’s

Month of March

4,058

131

 

Month of April

59,812

1,994

1,474%

Month of May

42,327

1,365

71%

Month of June

23,925

798

57%

Month of July

26,649

860

111%

Month of August

30,970

999

116%

Month of Sept.

22,809

760

75%

Month of Oct.

24,332

785

107%

Month of Nov.

38,293

1,276

157%

Month of Dec.

79,882

2,501

209%

Total March-Dec.

354,247

1,154

 

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 288,906

Deaths yesterday: 1,076

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 4.3% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 15,159,529

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 173,861

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 10.2%  

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 8,855,593

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 288,906

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 3.2%

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post. Short answer: If this percentage declines, that’s good. It’s been steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March.

IV. 7-day average of test positive rate for US: 10.2%

For comparison, the previous peak for this rate was 7.8% in late July, although the peak in early April was 22%. The rate got down to 4.0% in early October but has been climbing since then. This is published by Johns Hopkins.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

 

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